Amarynth Firehand dropped smartly to one knee. He had not yet, Will assumed, become accustomed to not wearing armour. Will saw the dark elf wince.
“Great King,” Amarynth fluted, “it is known far and wide that the baggage train of the Army of Light perished that day, butchered in the Red Gullies. It is known, and yet none know how. Was it deserters from the Horde, stray beasts and monsters, or even reinforcements for the orc-filth? Because all perished—and none of them, my lords, was above the age of fifteen—because all these children perished, there was no way to know.”
Amarynth paused.
“But now there is!”
Almost without moving his lips, Ned Brandiman murmured, “Every old theatrical trick, eh, Will?”
“If it works, don’t knock it.”
Amarynth filled his lungs and shrilled melodiously, “The atrocity was committed by the orcish filth of Nin-Edin themselves!”
The Royal Hall buzzed with voices, one or two raised in shouts, demanding answers, justice, and revenge in about equal measure. The High King Magorian’s head rolled to one side and he began to snore quietly.
Oderic stepped forward, sweeping his formal grey robes about himself. “But this is a most serious accusation, Lord Amarynth. What proof have you that this is true?”
“You ask us for proof?” The elf’s face contorted. “We, who are the Son of the Lady on earth?”
“I knew he’d go haywire somewhere…” Will Brandiman rubbed his knuckles across his eyes. He sighed. About to slip out of the gallery and go down to Amarynth, he stopped as one of the Knights Flagellant moved forward, uncovering what had been concealed by his silken cloak.
In a subdued voice nonetheless audible in that silence, the knight said, “High Wizard Oderic, here is your proof.”
The wizard moved forward, leaning on his staff. Will heard a most satisfactory gasp from the assembled nobility of Ferenzia.
The Knight Flagellant had left off his steel arm-defences so that the body he cradled should suffer less pain. What he carried in his arms was a Man-child no more than nine or ten years of age. Her skull seemed swollen and her eyes huge, and her upper arms, under her shift, could have been encircled by finger and thumb. She leaned her head listlessly against his breastplate.
A scar crossed her face, shattering one eye-socket. It wept yellow fluid. At some point her hair had been red, but it had been shaved back so that the continuation of the scar across her skull could be stitched, and now the hair grew out in patches.
All her bones stood out sharp as a bird’s breastbone.
“Look!” Amarynth Firehand seized the Man-child, grotesquely, by one leg. He raised the thin limb. An angry red-and-black scar across the back of her knee showed where her hamstrings had been cut.
“They took her maidenhood.” The elf lifted the child’s chin. “Kyrial, speak. Tell what you have told to me.”
The child’s face screwed up. Water rolled out of her eye.
“The orcs lay with her,” Amarynth said, into the appalled silence, “as they lay with alclass="underline" prisoners and those whom they had killed in their first attack. Kyrial, elf-friend, speak. Say how you escaped them.”
The Man-child began visibly to shake. She wore a grey shift, under which her body was bones rolling in a thin covering of skin. Her hands and feet appeared uncommonly large. She mewed.
“Say,” Amarynth persisted.
“…hid…”
The child’s voice was ugly, dissonant. The white-haired wizard approached, his face kindly.
“Speak, my dear. Where did you hide?” Oderic frowned. “You must tell us, you know.”
The child huddled against the metal breastplate of the knight.
“Where?” Oderic queried.
The Knight Flagellant tucked Kyrial’s head against his shoulder, where his cloak cushioned his armour. Soothing, he whispered something to her, then raised his head. “Sirs, she hid herself in a pile of butchered bodies, most of them companions she had grown up with, and passed as a corpse. There was no one to rescue her. She lay three nights that way.”
Amarynth said, “One hundred and fifty youngsters rode in charge of my baggage train. All were butchered. Raped, then murdered. We had thought there were no survivors. But here is Kyrial to swear, on her oath, who is responsible for the atrocity of Red Gullies. And who it is should answer for this crime against the rules of warfare.”
Will savoured the silence in the Royal Hall of Ferenzia, appreciating vicariously the frisson of horror.
Oderic, a tear rolling down his lined face, lay his hand on the Man-child’s head for a brief moment. Will caught a movement out of the corner of his eye: Perdita del Verro circling down from the far gallery for an additional close-up with a hand-held newsreel camera.
Oderic spoke up. “Poor innocent! Lord Amarynth, how came she to you now?”
The Holy One turned to his Knight Flagellant.
Prompted, the elven knight said, “She was found wandering, many months ago, my lords, by a family of dwarves. They tended to her in the mountains. She had no speech. Not until I came across her by chance did she speak and say ‘Red Gullies.’ But since then, she has refused to eat, and starves herself to death.”
At the mention of the Red Gullies the child began to cry.
“She shall be made a Ward of Ferenzia,” the High Wizard Oderic proclaimed. “We shall care for the poor child. But, my Lord Amarynth, I think you have the right of it. The best care will be to bring to justice the evil filth that did this act!”
Will whispered, “Awriiight!”
“But you have not heard all,” the Holy One, Amarynth, said. “Beloved child, speak what else remains.”
The scarred child’s head rolled back loosely.
“The name,” Amarynth prompted. “You heard the orcs call a name, elf-friend. Speak it now. You heard them shout their leader’s name. Speak it to us now. Speak.”
“Ashnak.” An ugly, weak, but unmistakable noise. “Ashnak.”
With grim satisfaction, Amarynth held the High Wizard’s shocked gaze. He said triumphantly, “Ashnak. The orc ‘general.’ The same filthy Ashnak who is henchman to the Dark Lord—and who now acts as His campaign manager in the election to the Throne of the World.”
Riot. Every Man in the gallery turning on his neighbour and yelling, every Man in the main body of the Royal Hall clamouring for instant justice, instant vengeance.
“Get out of that,” Will Brandiman exulted. “He may be our stepfather, but I haven’t forgotten the dungeons of Nin-Edin.”
“No,” Ned Brandiman agreed. “No, Will. Nor have I. Brother, he should have realised. We make bad enemies.”
The stewards and officers tried in vain to restore order to the Royal Hall of Ferenzia. The High King Magorian sat up and blinked at the court. Oderic, High Wizard, rapped his mage’s staff on the granite floor.
“My lords and kings of the south! Be not hasty!”
The wizard’s white hair gleamed in a shaft of sun, slanting down from the hall’s gothic heights. He placed one arm carefully on the shoulder of the scarred child weeping in the knight’s arms. “My lords, it is hard, in the face of this, but we must beware of haste. We must beware of folly—of condemnation without proof.”
Oderic shook his head wisely.
“And so I will say this to you. We may rightly now demand of Evil that there is held, immediately—before the election—a tribunal. A fair and just tribunal to find out the truth of the Red Gullies atrocity and to bring the true culprit to justice. We demand the immediate arrest of the orc general Ashnak for a war crimes trial!”